A Pet Peeve

By Clarence Bowles of Southern Roomers

At the risk of sounding like the infamous Mr. Rooney on 60 Minutes, I'll begin with one of his openings, "Have you ever noticed" how most sub-divisions have cars parked on at least one side of their already too-narrow streets, and on both sides, where legally permitted?

Well, I have, and it got me to wondering how those people can afford both a house payment and payments on three or four cars. After a closer look, I came to find that they can't.

The truth of the matter is that most families own no more than two; it’s just that no one parks in their garages. Why? You may ask. Simply because their garages are so full of junk they have gathered over the years and can't bear the thought of parting with, there just isn't any room for a car.

I'm sorry, but I just don't understand. They must have filled the garage up to the ceiling on the first day they moved in, or else they would be aware of the benefits derived from using it as was originally intended.

No frost, ice or snow to clear away while you freeze your nubs off, no direct hits by low flying elephant birds, no dust coating stirred up by passing traffic, no soap or eggs on Cabbage Night and your aerial might last as long as you own your car, not to mention incidental damage to finish or structural integrity by errant DUI kamikaze pilots making their way home on Friday or Saturday night.

There is just too much to be gained by parking in the garage instead of the driveway or the street.

In 1987, I had a home built and if it were not for my inexperience at being a home owner, and not having enough time to think out all my choices, I would have made that single car garage a two-and-a-half car garage and the driveway would cover most of the frontage on the property.

How could I have known that my teenage daughter would grow up, have her own car and lay claim to the driveway as her parking place? I am now contemplating a side apron, slab of concrete extending down the side of the present garage with a carport roof. I'm sure it would be easier than musical chairs with her car and mine.

I had a dream! A place where I need not be concerned with the sun fading the inside of the car, cool seats to sit upon, no matter how blazing the sun was, a place where I could wash my car at my leisure and the hose would reach without linking up two or more 50 foot pieces, dropping the water pressure to a mere trickle.

I have all that now just because I have a very large crawl space under the house and the attic area over the garage is well supported, roomy and easily accessed. I even thought far enough ahead to have the garage built three feet longer than standard so I could add a work bench and space to store a lawnmower and yard tools.

This year, during the heavy snowfall, I realized an additional plus to a cleaned-out garage: during snow emergencies, I wasn't required to dig out my car from the snow plows initial pass down the middle of the street and put it in the driveway so they could plow from curb to curb as my poor saughter did after a threat of towing by the local police.

So come on folks! Clean out those garages and find out what the good side of life is all about. I'll bet you will find that you really can survive without those family heirlooms cluttering up the place and drivers passing through your neighborhood will no longer need to run the maze, in and out to pass an approaching car.

P.S. "Garage Sale" is not an ad for someone wanting to get rid of their garage; it actually means getting rid of all that unneeded junk although there are plenty of people who could use one or more besides the one they presently cannot park in.

What's Up, Doc?

By Dani Ferguson of The Musings of a Middle Aged Woman

You know how there are things in everyone’s past that they aren’t particularly proud of or wish to admit. There are those parenting moments for instance when we didn’t necessarily use our best judgment. Well, one of my less than stellar moments as a parent occurred when my girls were four years old.

When my children were young they were not good little travelers like some children who are instantly lulled to sleep by the purring of a car engine. Oh no, my children never slept in the car, not even as babies.

Due to this fact, it goes without saying I wasn’t that thrilled when my husband decided he wanted to take a family trip from Oklahoma to California with our preschool age twin daughters. I began the trip with the greatest intention of remaining optimistic but we had hardly left the driveway when I realized my optimism was in vain.

We had barely reached the end of the block before the fighting began. Twin one snatched something away from twin two and twin two, being unwilling to tolerate such a blatant disrespect of personal space and property, retaliated by biting twin one on the arm like a starving wolf cub. As soon as twin one became of aware of the blood drawn by twin two she began to scream at a decibel rate equivalent to the sound of a jet leaving the tarmac.

At this point, all I could think about was the 1,342.46 miles of road trip ahead. By the time we reached Amarillo, Texas, a mere 286 miles from our house, I had begun the downward descent into a catatonic state. My husband, not wanting to face the prospect of raising two little girls on his own, made an executive decision to abandon the Magic Kingdom in favor of a shorter route to Arlington, Texas and the Six Flags Over Texas theme park.

As he exited Interstate 40 and turned south, I looked at him with more adoration and love than I had shown on our wedding night. Using Pig Latin to communicate we concocted the scheme to pass off Six Flags as Disneyland seeing as how our two passengers couldn’t read anyway.

In defense of our plot I fully intended to tell them the truth when they had children of their own and after they had traveled say 500 miles to visit Grandma at Christmas time.

Later that evening, we arrived in Arlington, a trip that would have taken less than four hours from our home without the detour through Amarillo but hey, that’s water-under-the- bridge. Since the girls didn’t know California from Texas, oak trees from palm trees, the disparagement in travel time didn’t raise any suspicions.

We checked into our motel to get a good night’s sleep before our trip to the “Magic Kingdom” the following day. I hadn’t been asleep three hours when I was startled into consciousness by the sound of gagging from the next bed. I barely opened my eyes before twin one began throwing up all over the bed immediately followed by the convulsive heaving of twin two.

Holding back my own urge to expel the contents of my stomach, I managed to get trashcans for all and cold rags on necks. By now I figured the “Magic Kingdom” wasn’t going to be on our itinerary but I didn’t count on the one-track mind of a four-year-old times two. It was apparent that if we didn’t go we were going to witness a full-blown fit that would make Super Nanny run for the hills.

So, bright and early armed with ice buckets stolen, I mean borrowed, from the motel and wet rags we ventured toward “Mickey’s Magic Kingdom.” Fortunately, the girls didn’t get sick again but we had to battle temperatures I’m sure were not being experienced in Anaheim. Texas in July is about 110 in the shade.

We stood in lines for rides with water misters spraying overhead only to have the water evaporate long before it hit our scorched and searing flesh. The girls kept asking to see Mickey Mouse and Snow White and their father’s creative answer was to tell them Mickey was in jail for DUI (my husband was a police officer) and that Snow White was on an extended vacation in Hawaii.

Fortunately there were a few Looney Tunes characters skulking about so that seemed to satisfy the kids. Nothing amuses a child like a giant rabbit gnawing a carrot yelling, “What’s up, doc?” while being chased by a gun-waving pig.

The girls requested toy swords at the souvenir stand and on our way to the parking lot we had them pose in front of the Six Flags sign. It had a picture of Bugs Bunny waving a sword over his head so we thought it would be cute to get a picture of our own sword-waving children. The shot was snapped and our vacation to the Magic Kingdom came to an end.

Long after the trip was a faint memory and my children had been in school for a couple of years, they happened upon our vacation snapshot of them in front of the “Disneyland” sign. I heard an enormous wail from the other room and was immediately confronted by two enraged second graders.

Who’s idea had it been to teach them to read?

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

The Scullery Maid

By Ellen Younkins

An hour or more in the kitchen each night,
I measure and stir to make a delight.
When everything's done and so am I
I sit down to eat and say OH MY!

Wasn’t that good? I hope you liked it?
Then I serve the dessert and hope to sit.
But who’s left to clean up, It must be me.
The rest have all left to watch TV.

I cook and I clean and serve the meal
and it’s really not that much of a big deal.
Until it comes time to clean up all of the mess
and there I am - the scullery maid in distress.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

TAHW?

By Johna Ferguson

Life puts many burdens on our shoulders as we grow up, but one has particularly plagued me from birth until now. I’m almost 80 but I’ve managed to get through bouts with cancer, PMR and even AVnode ablation, but this one has never left my side. It’s called dyslexia.

There are many theories abounding about its causes but most agree it is a developmental reading disorder that results from an inability to process graphic symbols. All that means is it is difficult to learn to read or spell correctly. Many words are upside down or backwards. Even numbers get involved in the process.

My dad, a doctor, first noticed it when I was just learning to talk. I couldn’t pronounce some words correctly no matter how often he said them; mayonnaise and elephant were most troublesome.

When I entered grade school, I couldn’t gain the concept of reading. When I heard the teacher read “Jane saw Spot,” I read it as “Jane was Spot.” I can’t possibly name all the terrible examples or experiences I had, but soon my mother took over and practically tutored me through grade and middle school.

She read all my lessons to me and then carefully went over them with me. If it was given to me orally, I could do okay, but when I wrote them down, what a mess. We were required to take Latin in ninth grade, and I just couldn’t cope with it so I was excused. But in high school we had to take two years of a foreign language if we wanted to go on to college.

I got my only D in Spanish. In Spanish II, the teacher understood I just couldn’t grasp it and passed me. Only with my mother’s help I graduated near the top of my class in high school and decided to apply for college. I wanted to go only one place, and that was Stanford. I didn’t want to go east to any of those fancy schools; I wanted to stay on the west coast and at a top university.

I was accepted by Stanford, but then suddenly changed my mind when I found my boy friend couldn’t afford to go there. He had to go to a state school, thus it was to be the University of Washington and I followed in his footsteps.

By then, I had taught myself to read and write slowly. I majored in sociology for it seemed the easiest; no math other than statistics, just two years of any science and no more years of struggling with a foreign language. In spite of working part-time during my four years in college, I managed to graduate with a very good grade point, enough to get me into graduate school. I enrolled to get a MSW, but in the meantime got married and then suddenly a pregnancy and had to drop out.

That child was a boy, a severe dyslexic also. The Seattle school system at that time did not recognize the handicap so he started regular school but when he couldn’t read by third grade, we send him to a private school where there were 14 instead of 25 children in the class. He did much better there but never really learned to read.

By then it was obvious our third son was also dyslexic, but still the Seattle school system balked at placing dyslexic children in any kind of handicapped category so again, an expensive private school where classes were smaller.

At his grade school, they offered a special reading tutor trained in teaching dyslexic children to read. By the time he reached high school he was able to read, albeit slowly, and went on to graduate from a small eastern college.

Now I suffer when typing. I know how to spell or look up most words in the dictionary but when I type them, I make errors and when I reread them, I fail to catch the mistakes. Luckily the computer catches most of them but I still reverse many words and especially numbers.

Don’t feel sorry for me for we all have our own crosses to bear. It’s my nemesis and although I can never conquer it, I keep trying.

So in reading any of my articles, if you decide I have used a word wrongly, just ignore it. At least you don’t have to struggle like my family does even with some of my spoken words. I’ll mean to say attaché case and instead say - at tai’ chi. Well, maybe you can get the idea.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

Naivety

By Mage Bailey of Postcards

“Oh,” I mentioned to a friend, “I’ll be applying for Medicare soon.”

“If there’s anything I can do to help,” she emailed back, “Just let me know. It can be a little confusing.” She included a link to the Social Security site for my edification and enjoyment. Carefully saving the email, I thanked her. Thanked her for the second email too.

There wasn’t any great hurry, I thought. My husband lost his job in June, but his COBRA would continue until January. He was looking hard for a job, so I didn’t worry. There had been only a few interviews, and no job had appeared. Now it was November. I had two months to get medical insurance lined up.

One day, a rather intimidating folder arrived titled, “Medicare & You 2010. Unable to admit to myself that I was scared, I sat that brochure right next to my computer as if I were going to open it - as if I were going to do something about it.

I was forced to look at it every day. Eventually I set a date to open it on the day my husband was planning to find something cheaper than COBRA.

What excitement? I opened the brochure to find Parts?  Part A, Part B - clear through to D. What’s all this? One stop shopping? Not at all. This was medicine by government. I must have been living in a dark hole somewhere not to know all this.

I shut the folder and opened the computer. I could do computers.

The link from my friend opened right up, and there I was applying for Medicare and feeling as if I knew what I was doing. Name, dates, addresses, Social Security number, all went right in. Insurance - COBRA. And there it came to a halt. The program would not let me go back or forward or any other thing to explain that COBRA was ending.

I panicked. I confess. My kind, sweet, thoughtful husband put up with me, he held my hand and kept me calm until I could phone Social Security a whole day later. By now the naivety was gone and my hackles were up.

“Oh yes, the program does that,” said the nice voice on the SS phone. Calmly. “Let’s see if you qualify,” she continued.

Barely. My Medicare would be based on when he was laid off. No end of December for me, the new date would be December 1. Two weeks. She’d send me three forms, and one was to be filled out by his old human resources department. I was to fill everything else out and immediately take myself to the nearest Social Security office - and wait on hard chairs all day just to expedite this. Yes, too, I had to have my Drug Plan in place when I went to apply.

I felt empowered enough today to spend four hours interviewing Drug Plans and Economy Advantage plans by phone. By early afternoon, I had learned a lot and had everything lined up. Despite my naivety.

By evening, I could laugh at myself again.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

The Treachery of Threads and Clay

By Jeanne Waite Follett

Daring, forbidden and messy, it was the most fun kids could have growing up in South-central Alaska. Right up until the funeral, that is. The funeral took the fun out of it in a miasma of bloat and coarse black thread.

Bordered by the Aleutian Range on the west, the Alaska Range in the north, and the Kenai and Chugach mountains to the east, Cook Inlet is a 180-mile-long estuary that pierces Alaska at its the southern coast. Nearing its northern terminus, the inlet splits into two fingers and Anchorage sits on the point between those fingers.

On the western side of the inlet stand the four, active, snow-covered volcanoes of Augustine, Iliamna, Redoubt and Spurr. At the end of that chain is Mt. Susitna, or the Sleeping Lady as she is called in folklore. Presenting the profile of a reclining woman, long hair flowing from her head, the Sleeping Lady is said to be waiting for her warrior lover to return from battle. I have often thought of the volcanoes as her guardians, gushing geysers of steam to warm her and spewing shrouds of soft ash to blanket her as she sleeps.

Mt. Susitna lies directly across the water from downtown Anchorage and the water between the two teems with tens of thousands of chinook, sockeye, coho and chum salmon, and the beluga and orca whales that chase them for food. Luscious razor clams spawn and live in the sandy beaches.

While stunning in its beauty, it was not the view that inspired us kids to bicycle several miles up KFQD Road and through the upscale subdivision of Turnagain by the Sea with its brown and green and yellow and blue ranch style homes and neat yards, black-topped roads and cement sidewalks.

We pedaled beyond the houses to the bluff overlooking the gray waters of glacial-ground silt mixed with seawater to a vacant lot where we would ditch our bikes in the shoulder-high grasses and alder bushes, then climb down a narrow drainage ravine to the mudflats a hundred feet below the bluff.

“Mudflats” is a misnomer. Much of the tidal plains are made up of rocky or sandy beaches, interspersed with beds of gray, gooey, sticky, wonderful clay. That’s what drew us.

We never took our shoes off when we walked on the clay. We always thought that this time we could stay on top of the clay and not get dirty. “This time” never came, even when we tried walking on the slippery algae patches that grew atop the muck.

If we stood in one place and shifted our weight from foot to foot, the clay took on quicksand-like properties, sucking in our feet and trapping us. Sometimes we could escape on our own but sometimes we had to be rescued by our friends or slip out of our shoes and then dig them out of the goop. The thirty-foot tides that scoured the mudflats twice daily were an added element of danger.

Before heading home we stopped at a freshwater creek and cleaned off all traces of clay from our jeans and shoes. The clay flats were parentally-forbidden territory, but they were so much fun and their lure so consuming, we could not understand why and thus chose to ignore the admonitions.

* * *

Television came to Anchorage during the winter of 1953-54, and my younger brother and I mounted an intense campaign to acquire one. Finally we were told that if we would be in bed and remain quiet by nine o’clock every night for a month, our parents would purchase the prized appliance.

We were in the last week of fulfilling our promised behavior when, lying still awake in our bunk beds near the back door of our log home, we heard voices outside and could see flashlight beams darting about in the dark.

Jim and I stayed quiet, not wanting to have to start over for another month. That coveted magic box of black and white moving pictures was within reach now.

We heard our parents go to the back door and speak with the men outside. Soon our mother came and asked if either of us had seen Gary Lund that day. I kept my mouth shut, suspecting a trick designed to buy our good behavior for yet another month. Then she explained that Gary was missing and the men outside were searching the creek and pond behind our house for him. Neither of us had seen him.

Gary’s body was found at low tide the next day entrapped in the clays of Cook Inlet near where the high railroad trestle crossed Chester Creek. The trestle was another forbidden area that lured us kids like fish to bait.

My favorite aunt insisted on taking us to the viewing at the funeral home. We parked against the curb and walked up the sidewalk to the neat, white, home-like building on a quiet side street in downtown Anchorage. Soft rain fell as we walked under the green canopy that covered the last eight feet of the walkway and up the steps with the black wrought iron handrails.

A number of people milled about McKay’s Funeral Home. Men stood on the porch and smoked while women huddled together inside and dabbed at their red swollen eyes with lace-trimmed handkerchiefs. There was very little conversation, and it was subdued.

On the right side of the room, on a bier decorated with numerous vases of flowers, was a carved oak casket with gleaming bronze handles. At the urging of my aunt, we approached and saw Gary laid out on white silk. He was dressed in a new suit and shoes and from the neck down looked as if he were ready for Sunday church.

From the neck up it was another story. His freckled face was bloated and huge stitches of coarse black thread sealed his lips and eyes shut.

This isn’t right, I thought. She shouldn’t have brought us here to see this.

At 12 years of age, I could not understand why I thought it was wrong of my aunt to take us to the viewing, although I suspected that her motives involved teaching a lesson to me and my brother, as well as to her own son, who was my brother’s age.

The clay flats of Cook Inlet lost their allure after that, but whether it was from the viewing of a young boy’s drowned body or the onset of my teen-age years and changing thoughts about what was fun, I do not know. I knew, though, that my feelings had changed towards my aunt.

* * *

Ten years later, on the afternoon of March 28, 1964, I stood once again on the bluff overlooking Cook Inlet, although this time the bluff was several blocks inland from where it had been in those days of bicycles and clay. The evening before the Pacific and North American tectonic plates had ruptured far below the gooey clay and rocks and soil, and a massive earthquake measuring 9.2 had shaken the life and innocence out of Anchorage and its surrounding areas.

Mixed with groundwater during the shaking, the soils and sands liquefied and the clay became a perilous lubricant. Great slabs of Turnagain by the Sea fractured and tossed dozens of homes and their occupants on a treacherous, one-way, roller coaster ride to the murky cold waters of Cook Inlet.

Unbelievably, the Good Friday earthquake of March 27 took only 13 lives in Anchorage and only 131 lives total.

Now a 22-year-old news reporter, I stood on the new bluff the morning after and stared at the tumble of ruined homes on that topsy-turvy landscape before me. Acres of debris floated on the water in the distance. I had escaped death twice during the five and a half minutes the quake had terrorized us, and I had to move from my damaged apartment downtown as soon as the National Guard would let me go into the ravaged area.

My numbed brain resisted the sight before me. Somewhere in that unholy calamity, volunteer search and rescue teams were crawling through the destruction looking for living and dead. Somewhere down there, my 16-year-old brother and other teenagers were salvaging possessions for those who had lost their homes. Aftershock after aftershock continued to shake the area, increasing the danger.

I stood on the new, raw bluff for a long time thinking about our days of foolhardy fun and of the coarse black thread that insulted the freckled face of a young boy.

When at length I turned my back on that geologic chaos, it was forever. I have never returned to it; I don’t need to see it to remember it.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

Chocolate Love

By Johna Ferguson

I think I must be a chocoholic,
For I don’t think I’m an alcoholic.

But I have that craving just the same,
The only real difference is in the name.

When I put my lips to my morning beverage,
A cup of hot coffee needs its morning leverage.

Where oh where is that box of candy,
I left on the table so it would be handy.

I think someone has hidden it away from me,
Instead left me a jar of honey straight from the bee.

But that sweet goo won’t satisfy my craving,
For a tiny bit of chocolate I’d do any slaving.

For it soothes my soul, makes my mind so brilliant,
Makes my body feel like it’s swelled with fulfillment.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

Remembering

By Claire Jean

I remember when I was born
I do remember!
Through eternity I slept,
By its quiet water swept,
In its silence safely kept,
All unknowing, night or day,
All unthinking, there I lay
Suddenly by life compelled,
I was free, no longer held,
Free to hear and feel and cry;
Free to live—or free to die,
Free to be that which am I,
I remember when I was born -
I do remember!

Pearl Buck, A Biography

It cannot truthfully be said that I remember most all that’s happened to me since I was born. On occasion, I’ve tried to reach back into my past hoping to find a starting point that might link up to present feelings and actions.

A very early memory I do have is standing at a neighbor’s glass storm door screaming because my mother was leaving without me. I still find being left behind objectionable.

I also recall my brother compelling me to wear a hula skirt and a lei made from crepe paper to participate in a neighborhood show for parents. This memory is supported by a picture of me in costume, lei and all, wiping my tears and looking quite pitiful. I still don’t like being center stage.

I vaguely remember a store window display featuring a much adored doll. I was certain that doll would soon be mine since I wanted it so badly. One day, my (same) brother and I were discussing our grandchildren’s toys and to my absolute amazement, he reminded me that I did not get the doll. I still don’t like being denied something wanted so badly.

My brother died unexpectedly a few years ago. It will remain a mystery as to what triggered his memory of not only the doll but the name of that doll, Tiny Tears, even I had forgotten. I should have asked him then but, I think, I was too taken aback and maybe feeling a tad ashamed about what might have happened.

Now when I want to know things that might offer a hint of who I am or why I react in certain ways, the people who would hold some of the answers are no longer here to satisfy my curiosity.

Who and what shapes us as the person we become? Does it begin in the womb as Pearl Buck seems to have believed? Do our early experiences, either real or imagined, leave their stamp? Is school a huge factor? Who wasn’t possibly transformed during adolescence? It has been written that girls especially are at risk of losing much of their self confidence during this time. Some seem to appear completely changed due to peer pressure in a period of just a few months.

I sometimes wonder how things would turn out if we were not saturated from birth being told who we should or should not be; what we should or should not do. Does the power of influence begin in the womb and end in the grave?

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

The Theological Discussion

By Nancy Leitz

When we moved to Hampton, Virginia, Jerry was five years old and too young to go to school so he mostly hung around with me and luckily, there was a boy just his age living across the street who he played with every day. The boy's name was Chris and he and Jerry became great friends, and had long discussions on many topics in our back yard.

The spot they chose to sit in to settle the important matters they debated was directly under my kitchen window so I was privy to most of the discussions they had.

Once they invited another boy who was an Air Force "brat" to join their conversation. The topic this day was "Where is the best place you ever lived?" Well, our Jerry had been born in Darby, Pennsylvania and had recently moved to Hampton so that was the extent of his experience in strange and exotic places.

Chris's Dad was a local attorney and he had lived in Hampton for all of his five years. So when the Air Force kid, named Bootsy Myers, answered the question with "Well, it's between Stuttgart and Okinawa," they were immediately intimidated and kicked him out of their discussion. They didn't need that one-upsmanship; they were cool in their own situation and comfortable with their lot.

Once, the boys were sitting under the kitchen window, as usual, and the discussion turned to religion. This was a new subject for them and they very tentatively decided to step into the theological waters. Actually, they didn't step, they plunged! But you really need a little background to understand their concerns.

The Hansen's had recently had their home painted and the painter who did the job was named Jesse Kursy. Jesse started the job on Memorial Day, May 30th. He painted two small windows and decided to go fishing.

He came back the following week and was painting another window when he heard the fire siren sounding and was off and running to the excitement of the fire.

A month went by and Jesse came back and scraped the front door, then left to go to a softball game.

This went on all summer and finally, on Labor Day (September 6th), he put the finishing touches on the house. It was the next day that the boys began to try to figure God out. Their conversation went something like this:

CHRIS: "Who made the World?"

JERRY: "God made the World."

CHRIS: "Who made the sky?"

JERRY: "God made the sky."

CHRIS: "Who made this grass?"

JERRY: "God made this grass."

CHRIS: "Who made my house?"

JERRY: “God made your house."

Chris jumped up, put his hands on his hips and shouted at Jerry, " Well, God might have made it, but Jesse Kursy painted it."

Jerry knew he had lost this one. He threw his hands in the air in defeat and slowly stole away.

Another day at another time he might be able to best Chris Hansen, but not this time, and not on this subject. This time it was cut and dried, he was done; and he knew it.

We had all watched Jesse Kursy take an entire summer to paint five windows and a door. The debate was over, the winner had left in triumph and Jerry was left in abject defeat. Maybe next time!

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]

Old Letters, Old Friends

By Jeanne Waite Follett

Spring 2005
My husband doesn't know my name. After thirty years of love and companionship, he no longer knows what part I play in his life.

He comes up the stairs into the loft where I am working at the computer. Everything appears normal. He's a hale and healthy man of 75, though lately he has been losing more weight than is good for him.

"Say, gal," he says. "How about getting me a phone number so I can call my wife?"

He says "gal" because he doesn't know who I am. He speaks in a complete sentence and by that I know he is hallucinating. When I ask who he wants to call, he responds, "Betty." He dislikes Betty and would never talk to her.

"How about Carol?" I ask. "I don't have Betty's phone number." He agrees.

I call his first wife and Ken and Carol have a "conversation." Carol is very kind and talks to him at length. Ken tries to hold the phone to his ear and listen. Sometimes he gets a couple words out and I can tell some lucidity is returning because his speech becomes more difficult. The phone frequently slips to his neck and he looks puzzled.

My husband has been stolen from me by a disease called Alzheimer's. It has been almost five years since he was diagnosed with dementia; three since a neurological reaction to hernia surgery slammed us up against the wall with the dreaded "A" word.

I've kept him at home, caring for him by myself. The disease is insidious and has led me down a deep, dark path so craftily that I am in way over my head before I realize what has happened.

I had wanted to keep him at home until he no longer knew me, our home or the life we had together. That time has arrived. It has become far too dangerous for each of us for him to continue to live at home.

His particular type of Alzheimer's is characterized by its rapid progression, almost constant hallucinations, delirium and muscle contractions that cause him to fall frequently. He can no longer dress or groom himself. Incontinence is becoming a problem.

More and more often I have to hand feed him. He cannot be left alone even for a few minutes. He is often frightened, often worried. He says, in his more lucid moments, he wants "out," wants to stop taking "the pills," his six dementia medications.

September 2005
I take Ken to Arizona with the aid of his eldest daughter. We spend the night before the flight in a hotel in Anchorage hoping to minimize the negative impacts of travel. Ken wanders around the hotel room all night, talking to imaginary listeners. None of us sleeps.

During the flight, we sit on either side of him, each holding one of his hands trying to keep him from pulling on the seat in front of him. He becomes more and more agitated, less and less connected. I give him his evening medications early, trying to calm him.

That evening, I place my husband in an assisted living home. I turn his care over to strangers. The home is very nice, very clean, but I cannot bear to watch. Walking out of that home on the morning of my return flight is the single most difficult thing I have ever had to do in my life.

I come home to Moose Pass and begin a winter of introspection. I sit and I wait. There is no closure. Instead, there are periodic emotional upheavals as various family members try to adjust to Ken's circumstances. I feel severely conflicted: I should be there to hold him and protect him from the things that frighten him nowadays; I should be at home, trying to heal.

I wait. I have no desire to socialize, but friends and neighbors watch out for me. They stop by to chat, invite me for dinner, make sure I am occupied at Christmas. Still I wait.

Long, endless days; even longer nights. I cannot get to sleep until four or five in the morning. I sleep until noon, hating myself for it, but unable to adjust to an earlier schedule. I wait some more.

February 2006
Ken's daughter calls to say that he has taken a turn for the worse, and we think it might signal the start of a terminal bout of dehydration that we have been expecting.

I get Ken's medical records out, working on a timeline of the progression of the disease, seeing it through his neurologist's eyes with her words. By late evening I must force myself to think of something else. Unfortunately I settle on my years just out of high school.

I think of mistakes I had made then, both in my work and in my personal relationships. I think of a first love, long before I met Ken: some ill-considered words I have rued for forty years and an apology I have wanted to tender all this time. Too late now, as he died a long time ago.

Tossing and turning at two in the morning, my brain doing really bad things to me. I am desperate to find anything else to think about other than those two troubles. I fear an emotional meltdown, recognizing the symptoms.

I recall a shoe box filled with old letters that I wrote forty years ago to a friend. She had returned them to me six years ago, and I have often thought of chucking the whole box of letters into the woodstove unread, fearing that they might contain some long forgotten embarrassment I wouldn't want known.

I get the box from the bottom drawer of my desk and pluck a letter out at random. All my troubles have set me up for the emotional tornado that rips through me as I read that first letter.

There it all is: a chance, late-night meeting with my first love, coffee at an all-night restaurant, apology offered. I'd been met with understanding, forgiveness, his own apologies and enduring affection. How could I have forgotten such a monumental event in my life?

I sit up all night reading those letters, laughing and crying. Long forgotten events come tumbling back into my memory. I am astounded at how much I've forgotten.

But the best part, the very best, is what lay between the lines in those old letters - unfailing, unquestioning friendship from many.

For days afterwards, I reread those letters, write dozens of emails to friends about my discovery. To a select few I speak of that old relationship, how it has formed me into the person I am today. I speak of the lessons I learned from it and how those lessons have helped make my marriage to Ken last thirty years.

I speak of wanting to make that apology for forty years, that I now know things need to be said while there is still time.

I begin contacting friends from those old days, telling them how much I have valued their friendship then and now. I tell my friends of today the same. I am looking back on that young woman that I used to be with understanding, tolerance and some fondness despite all her youthful mistakes, as I reconcile my first thirty years with my last thirty years. I am becoming a whole person.

I begin to see patterns in my life. I see that things do indeed happen for the best and that there seem to be reasons things happen as they do. May not have been what I wanted to have happen at the time; may not have seen any reason for it then.

I puzzle about what I may have done to deserve watching my husband's brain rot away these past five years and then it occurs to me that perhaps it had nothing to do with ME. Maybe Ken needed me there for HIM.

I sense the beginning of healing. This dreadful journey that I have been on with Ken is far from over and there can be no closure yet. I know there are some land mines waiting out there for me, but I can feel myself becoming stronger, less wounded, ready to face what this journey may bring.

And that box of old letters, unburned and unread all these years? Perhaps they were just waiting for the time when they would do me the most good.

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[INVITATION: All elders, 50 and older, are welcome to submit stories for this blog. They can be fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir, etc. Instructions for submitting are here.]